Sunday, March 15, 2009

You THINK You Pissed Yourself?

I don't know about your town, but the Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend is just about the drunkest day of the year in Chicago. Many spend their entire morning and afternoon completely pickling themselves with alcohol, but I spent most of Saturday afternoon lying around doing absolutely nothing with my girlfriend. It was a wonderful, totally mindless afternoon, right down to watching Norbit. Don't judge me.

Anyway, when we finally emerged from her apartment, there was still some daylight left, and it was around 6:00 PM. We saw a guy who looked to be in his mid twenties, disoriented, wearing a predictably green shirt and having way too much trouble walking and texting as he made his way down the middle of the street. Something about this guy being alone, quiet, and it being still light out, made me wonder what was wrong with him without even thinking that it was simply drunkenness. Gancey Girlfriend had no trouble diagnosing him: "That guy is three sheets to the wind,*" she said, as we walked towards my apartment to begin some boozing of our own. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not saying what I often do when I see a guy like that - He's everything I want to be.

That guy was lit up like a Christmas tree, but he wasn't the drunkest guy I saw that weekend. The absolute drunkest was someone I only saw in a picture.

I knew things would be ugly for a friend of mine from said picture when he told me that he was so intent on getting schlitzed that he got a hold of a bag of Dihydrogen Hexachloroiridate, more commonly known as an IV, and a needle to shoot himself up to rehydrate the next day. Things were even uglier than I could have possibly imagined. Today, on the Sunday of St. Patrick's Day weekend, the most hungover day in Chicago, without saying anything else at all to me, he announced, in a gruff, painful sounding voice that he often has after a night with lots of loud mouth soup, talking loud and drawing a crowd, "I pissed myself." He then clarified, "Well, at least I think I did."

That's a strange statement, right? Either you pissed yourself or you didn't. Well, he then explained that he and a friend were looking over the pictures from the night prior over breakfast, when he came across a full body shot of himself, the one he would show me, with a wet spot starting at his crotch and going all the way down his right leg, almost to his ankle. It's possible someone spilled on him, but not likely that it would have that precise of a location and pattern. I'm pretty sure, as is he and anyone in that bar clinging to any of their sobriety, that he, in fact, pissed his pants.

What's most impressive about this is that he also showed me two numbers that he got post peeing his pants. Those gals were either too drunk to notice (good thing), they gave him bogus numbers (probably the case), or they are into guys who piss their pants (not likely but interesting).

I told him that perhaps a guy taking a whiz right then and there could be seen as a form of flattery. Consider him saying:

"I just felt our conversation was so engrossing that I couldn't dream of interrupting such a beautiful exchange with something as mundane as a trip to the bathroom."

Well, Seven Readers, you know there are no limits to the stupidity we can explore on this rag over the last four years, so why don't you tell us an incontinence story?

_____________________________________________________________________* I was always curious about this phrase so I looked it up. I found this on phrases.org.uk.something-something, and I'm using it with no permission at all.

"Don't be taken aback to hear that sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor."

I don't have a "direct" incontinence story, although an elderly customer at my desk once attempted a fart, and more than obviously shat himself right in front of me. The sad part is, he tried to play it off. He did exit walking kind of funny though.